


Paper Boys

by therudestflower



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: 1990's, An AU obviously, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Burn, Upstate New York, but they're still paper boys!!!, possibly no burn, religious character, there's more characters but if you're in their tag this won't be exciting, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2020-08-13 20:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20180455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therudestflower/pseuds/therudestflower
Summary: David finds the only job there is for a teenager in 1996 who can only use the family car between 2 and 7 AM. Delivering papers leaves much to be desired, even if his training partner with a weird name is entertaining enough.





	1. Chapter 1

In front of his parents, David was nothing but positive about moving upstate and doubling up with his Aunt Talia and Uncle Simeon. 

  1. They had gone from a 500 square foot apartment to a...maybe 600 square foot basement with temporary walls dividing the humid space into two bedrooms and a living space with a lawn chair and a damp couch.
    1. Upstairs the oven worked!
    2. Les could run around the 16 acres back property instead up jumping up and down and hitting the walls in their apartment
    3. Now David knew what an acre was!
  2. The payout from their landlord forcing them out let them buy a car which means
    1. David learned how to drive a car in the three weeks before school started
    2. They could drive out to WalMart to buy socks and the latest 1996 fashion. 
    3. If they were willing to drive into town, they could experience the gluttonous magic of a McDonald's drive-thru
  3. In the month and a half David had been in his junior year at the tiny high school, no one had
    1. Been late for class because of the line at the metal detectors because there are no metal detectors
    2. Found a bloody bandaid in their lunch, to David’s knowledge
    3. Had a single fight?

When he brought up these positive points, his parents beamed appreciatively and said things like, “That’s our David.” Which was funny, because aside from emergency situations like this, David wasn’t known for being particularly positive. If he had friends, for example, he would bring up the following constantly:

  1. He didn't have friends. 
    1. They were sharing the landline with his aunt and uncle and his aunt apparently didn’t know what a phone bill was because she was never _not _on the phone, so even if David were to spend a fortune and call his friends, he couldn’t.
    2. He tried writing a letter to one of his friends and they just sent back a postcard with a dick drawn on it
    3. Maybe his friends in New York weren’t that great
    4. But they were better than no friends
  2. When the AIDs crisis came up in his social studies class, even his teacher made it clear that it was a _gay disease _and the class quietly hummed in agreement in this weird silent bigotry that David found he liked a lot less than New York’s loud bigotry
    1. (One girl said, “Grow up, it’s the 90’s!”)
    2. Not to mention that there are literally only white kids in his entire school and David thinks they might the only Jewish family in this town. How did Aunt Talia and Uncle Simeon end up here?
  3. David didn’t have a job
    1. He had two jobs in New York because he could get to any job he wanted in the entire island but
    2. This was nowhere and the only place David could get to was school because
      1. There are no trains
      2. There are no buses
      3. David doesn’t have a bike

He tried to keep his gripes to himself, but he did bring up the job thing over dinner. They didn’t have family dinners at home because they were all working different schedules. It’s a bit incorrect to call it a family dinner now, with Sarah still back home living with friends so she can finish out her senior year at the same high school. But Mom and Dad both worked in town and came home at the same time now, and Aunt Talia acted like they’re all obligated to sit down together and stare at each other while Les described his day in great detail. 

When Les took a breath, David used the opening to say, “I need to get a job.” Les stopped talking and everyone stared at him, so David continued, “I need to keep saving up for college, and it’s not good to have a gap in my resume.” 

Mom frowned. “Well David, we need the car to get to work.”

“And I need to go to college,” David said. He knew he was being a brat. He knew there wasn’t a good option. Other kids at school seemed to all have their own cars and have jobs, but what was David supposed to do?

Uncle Simeon cleared his throat to get their attention. Uncle Simeon speaking at all was something that merited their full attention. “When I was a boy,” he said, “I had a paper route. I was home by seven every day. I know Wiesel at the distribution center, I could get you a job.” 

“We’re not the only ones here?” Les asked loudly. 

Even though this seemed like the perfect solution, he couldn’t help but pick at it. “Don’t I need a bike?”

“You would use the car,” Uncle Simeon said, “This is the correct next step. You will call Wiesel after dinner.” 

He said it like there was no argument to be made, which was how David ended up at the distribution center a week later. 

There was this concept that David learned in his Sociology class back home called the foot in the door effect. It basically meant that once you said yes to one thing, it made it much more difficult to say no to additional things, no matter how ridiculous. 

  1. Work before school? Sure. 
  2. Get paid by the number of papers delivered, not hourly? That kind of makes sense.
  3. Arrive at the distribution center at 3:45? Okay. 
  4. Work seven days a week? Uh, yeah. 
  5. Never take a day off because if you do we will just fire you and hire someone new? Right. Sure. 

David was well versed in New York child labor laws and this job violated about fifteen of them. 

During David’s phone calls with Wiesel, whenever any not-stellar aspect of the job came up, Wiesel would repeat that they supplied coffee and every paper boy got his own free thermos to fill up before heading out. So when David arrived at the distribution center, walking as directed into an overbright room with five other guys already standing around, he was looking for coffee. 

There was a giant silver thing that looked like it might have coffee in it, but no thermos. He was so tired it might be that half his brain was just off, so when a short mustached man introduced himself as Mr. Wiesel, David asked, “Do I get my thermos here or somewhere else?”

With a wide smile, “You get to use all the money we give you to buy one.” 

“I thought it was free,” David said. 

“It is free,” Wiesel said, “You couldn’t buy it if it wasn’t for this job. Don’t get off to a bad start, okay?” 

Everyone was bone tired and even if David was at all convinced intelligible words would come out if he tried to introduce himself, he didn’t think it would be welcome. Everyone _ else _had a thermos, most of them had the same one bearing the logo of the general store in town. He recognized everyone from school--all from different circles--except for one guy. He was short and looked all of fourteen, which wouldn’t surprise David, given the obvious disregard for child labor laws in this operation. He also kept cutting David these incensed looks even though David had been in the room for all of four minutes and hadn’t even spoken to him. 

No one was talking to each other, and David figured they were waiting for Wiesel to come out of the bathroom and give them direction. 

Eventually, Wiesel came out and looked them over. “Everything is as normal, except what I told you yesterday. Don’t fuck up too badly. I don’t want any calls about broken pots or dogs getting hit.” 

Wordlessly everyone filed out except the tiny kid. David took half a step after Wiesel who had disappeared through an office door and stopped. 

“He didn’t tell me what to do,” David muttered. 

“That’s because I’m supposed to babysit you,” the other guy said loudly. “You’re really fucking up my route, you know,” he said. 

David turned to him, “I’m sorry?” 

“Me fucking too,” he said, “We’re taking my car.” He picked up a stack of newspapers and shoved them at David. 

David followed him into the back parking lot and followed him to a white sedan with duct tape on the front bumper. The other guy fiddled went to the passenger side and unlocked it first, giving David a ferocious glare as he walked over to the driver’s side and unlocked it. 

He stood there expectantly. David headed for the passenger side but the guy said, “_ No. _You’re driving.” 

“But it’s your car.” 

“Yeah, and you’re the one who has to learn the route. Get in.” 

The inside of the car smelled like dirt and lemon peels. David had to fiddle with the seat because it was pushed too far forward. The other guy watched him. 

“We’re taking the back forties,” he said. 

David waited for more explanation but none came. “I don’t know what that is,” he said. 

“What? Who the fuck grows up here and doesn’t know what the back forties are?” 

“Someone who grew up in the city?” 

If anything, the anger radiating off him became more intense. “Jesus Christ. Just get out of here and turn left.” 

They drove for a while on the same road. Next to him, the angry twerp had the papers in his lap and was rolling them and securing them with rubber bands on his wrist. Eventually, the silence and anger became too much. 

“Look,” David said, “you were new at this job at some point. And someone had to teach you how to do it. It’s actually a big honor, you know, being chosen to train a new employee.” 

There was a silence, for a minute. Then

“That’s pretty sad.”

“What?” 

“You’re so brainwashed by capitalism that you think this is an honor. I pull two routes in a morning--good routes near town were it isn’t four houses a mile. So not only is my paper rate in the toilet I have to _ split _it with you. I’ll be lucky to make twenty bucks.” 

“Wait seriously? We need to make at least a minimum wage. You should be making a training bonus.” 

He laughed loudly, “Do you think this is Wall Street or something.” 

David’s stomach sank as he drove and realized that he was exaggerating about the area the route was on being four houses a mile. But it was still sparse. David calculated the rate for each paper the other guy threw out the window and even without it being divided in half, it would be just barely minimum wage each morning. 

“Wiesel said I’d pull $1,500 a month,” David said. 

“I thought you city slickers were supposed to be smart,” he said with an exaggerated accent. 

Yeah. David did too. They drove further out and the houses became even fewer and farther between and David saw his income plummet. 

“I’m David,” he said, for something better to talk about. 

“My name is Spot,” the other guy said. 

David sighed. “I know we’re not going to be friends, but you don’t have to--”

“That’s my name asshole_ .” _

“Legally?”

“No, not_ legally _, who the fuck do you think I am?” 

“Well I don’t know you from Adam, so I don’t know.”

Spot--_ Spot _\--huffed. “Should have figured you aren’t from here, you don’t know shit.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’ve seen you at school?”

“Nope.”

“But it’s the only high school for a long while. I mean, you’d have to drive a long way to get here in the morning if you didn’t live in the district.”

“You think I’d drive more than fifteen minutes to get to this shitty job?”

A terrible thought occurred to David. “You’re not...you’re not too _ young _to be in high school are you?” Spot made an enormous aggravated sound and David nearly crashed the car. “Okay, so you’re not?”

“I’m _ sixteen. _This is my car. Jesus Christ, I hate when people ask me that.” 

Spot threw a newspaper out the window with enough drama that David thought it would sail around and hit the front of the car, but it landed in the center of the driveway the same as every paper he’d thrown. David considered bringing up that as a sixteen-year-old, Spot legally had to be in school, but did not think it would be productive. 

David found himself watching the clock as they drove. There was silence except for Spot tersely telling David where to turn and the thwack of the papers hitting driveways. 

It was unexpected when Spot spoke up. 

“Why this job? Why not WalMart or McDonalds?” 

“We only have one car, and my parents use it during the day.”

“You have one car for your entire family?”

Why did everyone in this entire town think that was so weird?

“Yeah. We didn’t even have a car before we got here. I learned how to drive just a few months ago.” 

Spot threw a paper out the window with one hand but once it was free pressed both hands to his forehead. “You barely know how to drive and you didn’t tell me.” 

“I’m a great driver! Have I messed up once?” 

“No,” Spot admitted. “Look,” he said, “it’s not your fault Wiesel has it out for me. This is an okay job if you get the good routes. But that’s not likely, no one’s going anywhere. We get a new loser every few weeks in this route who realizes that they’re making shit after gas and quit. It used to be I wasn’t stuck with the ‘honor of training’ but I fucked up a couple of weeks ago so, here we are. So you should get another job.” 

It was weirdly kind and but David was too distracted to take it in. 

“We’re not reimbursed for gas?” 

Spot laughed loudly. “Holy shit, are you one day old?” 

They got back to the center early, which David was happy about, even Spot reminded him that it made no difference in how they were paid. David kept yawning so hard his eyes watered. Even getting off early, he’d have twenty minutes to sleep when he got home before going to school. 

“I think I’ll be fine to do this on my own tomorrow,” David said, looking around for Wiesel so he could tell him. “I’m good with directions.” 

“Policy is a week,” Spot said, “hope you weren’t planning on eating for a while.” 

Even though he could have left on his own, David found himself waiting around while Spot filled up his thermos. He hadn’t really looked at Spot before, because he was distracted and then because he was driving.

  1. He had the same haircut as one of the characters from the Boy Meets World show that Sarah loved
  2. He was dressed grunge, which wasn’t really in New York anymore, but everything seemed to be a couple of years behind out here. 
    1. David felt a little foolish for wearing a button-down shirt when Wiesel wasn’t even dressed for work. 
  3. When he wasn’t working overtime to look angry, he was exhausted

“How do you do this every day?” David asked through a yawn. 

“Self-preservation,” Spot said. “Coming back tomorrow?” 

  1. Money (even crap money) was money
  2. ?

“Yeah,” David said, “I am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not in Pulitzer AU :OOO. I spend so much time in one Newsies and one Teen Wolf AU so I challenged myself to work a new verse and this is the result! This will not be a big story, just a maybe 10ker.


	2. Chapter 2

David spent all day thinking about whether he was going to go to work in the morning. School was harder than it was back home, but in different ways. They were doing totally different math, and David didn’t understand how, when this school is supervised by the same state standards, but they were. But honors English here was totally different too, and he found himself retreading the same skills he was taught freshman year. 

No to mention the social scene was a completely new terrain. He was friends with other geeks back home, but here even the geeks were a tightly wound group. These kids had all been together since kindergarten, and once David passed the novelty of being new without forming any friendships, he found himself getting hall passes from his third-period history teacher and spending lunch in the library. 

Today that meant sleeping. 

He was woken up by the “grow up it’s the 90’s” girl prodding his elbow. 

“You were snoring,” she said. 

David blinked and sat up. “Oh,” he said, “sorry.” 

“We’re actually not allowed to sleep at school,” she said, “It’s against the student conduct code we sign.” 

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Do you--” 

David stood up. “I should get to class. Thanks anyway.” 

Quitting meant he would be able to sleep more than four hours tonight. It meant he would go through the day not deeply exhausted. It also meant that Spot could go back to his usual routes and be able to apparently buy food? 

But quitting meant quitting. Quitting meant telling his family and this town that he couldn’t handle a slightly inconvenient job. And that wasn’t what Jacobs did. Dad had plenty of worse jobs over the years. Maybe David had never had one this bad, but at least he didn’t smell as bad as he did when he worked at the crappy Italian restaurant with the roaches, and at least he didn’t have a six months sunburn like he did after he worked at the public pool. 

It still wasn’t  _ great.  _

He told the family about the job in a low level of detail over dinner. He tried to leave out the crappy stuff, but that would have meant speaking for three seconds. Dad caught on right away. 

“These are labor violations,” Dad said. 

“I know,” David said. 

“Someone should do something about it,” Dad said. 

“I know,” David said. 

Dad was silent for a moment, then, “You should do something about it.”   


It was pretty cool to have progressive parents, in general. David felt at home at protests--not that they were exactly going to break out on main street up here--and he generally knew more about what was going on in the world than his teachers. Sometimes his teachers didn’t like that, but that was okay. His parents taught him that the approval of authority figures wasn’t always a good thing. 

And he was pretty sure if he told them any of the things he thought might be true about himself, sometimes, they would be okay with it. 

On the other end, his parents sometimes expected a  _ lot  _ of them. 

“You want me to organize a labor strike on my second day on the job?” David asked. 

“Why not?”

“That would be  _ insane. _ ”

Uncle Simeon cleared his throat and Dad sighed. “Wiesel is a fair man, he is paying these boys as much as he can.” 

_ That  _ triggered a very loud argument that ended with Mom shouting, “Bullshit!” which was pretty fun. 

By nine David had made a plan. 

  1. He would continue working as a paper boy until he had enough money to buy a bike
    1. No one was out here buying him bikes
    2. He needed to be saving up for college
  2. He could bike to school and get a job in town and not work brutal hours. It would be better. 
  3. Still, he couldn’t abide by destroying someone else’s livelihood to get there. 
    1. Even if it wasn’t a system of his own making. 

It was dark on the drive to the distribution center. David still wasn’t used to how dark it got out here. He was worried that he’d fall asleep when he started driving without someone in the car with him, through throwing the papers would occupy his mind enough. 

He had money saved up--thermos money, not bike money--but hadn’t had the chance to buy a thermos the day before. He started drinking coffee when he the job in the restaurant a few years ago and just smelling it was enough to make him want some. 

He didn’t take more than three steps into the distribution center before a silver thermos was thrust in front of him. He looked towards the source and saw Spot was holding it out to him. David took it out of his hands. 

“Wiesel as a prick, and that thermos lie is just sadistic,” Spot said, walking away from him towards the coffee. David followed him. “If you quit today, you need to give it back. It’s not mine.” 

“Whose is it?”

Wiesel interrupted with another kind warning to not fuck up and Spot led them back to the white sedan. After a moment of consideration, David went to his car and got the bag he’d brought out of the back before getting into the driver’s seat. 

Spot pulled the rubber bands over his wrist and started wrapping up the papers. “Since you haven’t bailed yet, here’s the plan. Today you drive again. Tomorrow we use your car, and for two days you learn how to throw papers. Then you do both for two days. Then on Sunday, you drop me off in town and do it by yourself and I get to sleep for once in my life. Agree.” 

Spot wasn’t asking, he was demanding agreement. 

“And not tell Wiesel?”

“Unless you’re a fucking narc?”

“Nope,” David said, “stick it to the man. No problem.” 

“Are you going to start the car, or did you forget how to drive since yesterday?” 

David considered. He took the bag off his lap and put it in the back seat. No one was starving to death in the next few hours, and he’d put off a possible confrontation if he could. 

Today was easier than the day before. David wasn’t lying about having a good head for directions, and he’d figured out exactly how fast to drive so that Spot wouldn’t make annoyed sounds. They road in easy silence, the only sound being Spot snapping rubber bands around the papers and the smack of them hitting grass. 

“When you do this by yourself, how do you wrap the papers? Do you do it before you leave?” 

“If you want to waste a ton of time,” Spot said, “You do it while you drive.”

“What? That’s dangerous.”

“You don’t get paid to sit around folding paper, you get paid to get papers on lawns.” 

“So we’re supposed to simultaneously drive, wrap papers and throw them the exact right place?”

Spot laughed. “Sounds like a job someone who learned to drive two months ago shouldn't have taken, doesn’t it?” 

What the hell was David thinking? 

“You’re sixteen too,” David said to distract himself, “you can’t have been driving that much longer than me.” 

“I’ve been driving as long as my foot could reach the pedal.” 

David snorted.

“Don’t.”

“Has that been like, three weeks now?”

“You do  _ not  _ know me well enough for that,” Spot said, but he didn’t sound angry. 

“I know that you’re short.” 

“Har har. So why are you here?” Spot asked, “It’s my understanding that city people pretty much detest the rest of us.” 

It was a non sequitur for sure, but Spot said it like it was a natural transition. 

“Detest is a strong word,” David said. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“Whose idea was it?”

David had a twenty minute spiel he could give on what happened, but he simplified it. “Three years ago they passed these laws in New York--in the city--that made it legal for landlords to increase the building rent anytime someone moves out. Our landlord as a real swell guy, he forced people out and jacked up the rent until no one could pay it anymore. We tried to stay as long as we could, but when we couldn’t afford it anymore, we ended up here.” 

“There aren’t other apartments in New York?” 

“Not that we could afford. Or maybe there were, but we needed somewhere to live and our only family is out here.”

Spot laughed. “Greeley is probably your worst nightmare right?” 

It wasn’t. David had spent some time upstate, but on the drive up when they came out, he became briefly terrified as they passed through a rural stretch that Greeley wasn’t what he remembered, and he’d be living in a field. He kind of was, his family’s property was huge, but he could see other houses and town wasn’t too far in, and once he had a bike he’d be able to get around. 

“It’s fine,” David said. “School is weird." 

"Yeah. So let me guess, you're on the student council already? Or band? Or AV club." 

David couldn't help but feel annoyed, even if he'd done all those things back home. "None of the above."

"Who are you friends with?"

It was kind of a weird question, but David rolled with it. "No one? No one at that school knows who I am." 

"That's not true. They're talking about you, especially since you're new." 

"They're not." 

"Believe what you want." 

He would. And he would change the subject. "Have you ever been to the city?” 

Spot used throwing a paper out the car window to gesture at the slowly lightening wooded street they were driving down. “Nah,” he said, “kind of an allegory of the cave situation. Can’t hate this place if I don’t know what else there is.” 

David tried to fit the Plato reference into what he knew--or barely knew--about Spot so far. 

“That’s pretty sad?” David suggested. 

“No,” Spot said, slow like he was dumb, “I live here. I don’t have a way not to live here. If I hate it here, then my life will be harder. The people in the cave are happy.” 

“And you’re happy?” 

“Are you?” 

David didn’t answer. 

The route was well designed, there was very little time they were driving that Spot wasn’t throwing papers out the window. David had learned in school that with the rise of the internet, someday no one would have newspapers delivered anymore. As they pulled back up to the distribution center, he brought this up to Spot who said, “Well that’s stupid. How would I make my living?” 

It reminded David of his pretty weak attempt at righting the injustice that his training was costing Spot. “Um,” he said, which was enough to keep Spot from getting out of the car. “So I brought snacks. You could have some if you wanted.”

Spot fell back into the car and slammed the door shut. He stared at David with this tiny white hot intensity that David couldn’t look away from. 

“I mean, you could take some with you,” he stumbled out. 

“Uh huh,” Spot said. “You ask about me in school today?” 

“What? No. I was doing all I could to stay awake today. Why, what would I have heard if I asked about you?”

Spot set his jaw and reached for the paper bag in the back of the car. He started taking things out, inspecting the cans of tomatoes and dented box of crackers that he’d found in the back of Aunt Talia’s pantry. “That I’m awesome. I had a steak for dinner last night. How about you?” 

Any sign of the playful energy from this morning was gone. “Not steak.” 

“That’s right. I had steak for dinner, when I’m not babysitting you I have the best routes and _ I  _ had an extra thermos. I don’t need any favors.” Spot shook his head and opened the passenger door again. “Get out of my car. I have places to be.” 

Face heating, David got out of the car. He started to go to his parents’ car, but stopped and called to Spot, “I’m not trying to be a dick.” 

“Imagine if you were trying,” Spot said, then he got inside and slammed the door. 

The bag was still in Spot’s car. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


David came back the next day. He still needed money for a bike and to be a Jacobs, and Jacobs didn't quit. Even when they were met with open hostility at four in the morning. 

The only thing Spot said to him that wasn’t about newspapers was, “You still have my thermos?”

"Do you want it back?" 

"Not if you're not gonna bail." 

It was the most pleasant interaction they had all morning. Driving the route was a cakewalk compared to throwing papers under Spot’s direction. David was too slow putting the rubber bands on the papers and every time David asked Spot to stop driving, he slammed on the breaks as hard as he could. He glared when David pointed out they were in his parent’s car today, so maybe be gentle? When David suggested they just stop for a minute so he could catch up, Spot said, “You could always just quit,” and David said, “So you get stuck training someone new?” 

There was also the matter of David having abysmal aim. More than once, they had to stop the car so David could go gather a paper and put it on someone’s lawn. It didn’t escape David’s notice that they were running behind. Eventually, Spot made this primal noise in his throat and pulled over and demanded they switch places for the rest of the route. Even with that, they got back to the distribution center fifteen minutes late, which meant David would be late giving his parents the car and might miss his bus and--

Probably Spot wasn’t thrilled based on the way he was yelling, “Mother fucking cocksucker son of a whore asshole sea salt mother fucker.” Spot barely put his parents’ car in park before jumping out and running to his car. David wasn’t even halfway to the driver’s side before Spot peeled out and thundered out of the parking lot. 

David fell asleep in biology in last period. He felt it happen the exact same way it did when he was in bed, slow and heavy until he was fully under. He woke to a textbook slamming on his desk, catching on his hair. He looked up to the impassive face of Mrs. Ball. 

“Office.” 

“But--” 

“Our school rules are very clear. No sleeping. Office, now.” 

Fatigue stripped away David’s manners. “Seriously? What kind of school is this? If that was how things were run in the city, there’d be more students in the office than in class.” His classmates didn’t make noises of agreement, like they would at home. Instead, there was silent shock. 

“Well thank God you have a chance at something better,” Mrs. Ball said sharply. “Office, now.” 

David didn’t even have a schema for being sent to the office. He had been sent with notes, or to have meetings for student government meetings, but he’d never been  _ sent to the office.  _ There was no wait, he was sent right to the vice principal’s office who stared him down like he’d actually done something wrong. 

Explaining that he’d only been sleeping didn’t help matters. 

“Sleeping is a very serious offense, Mr. Jacobs,” the vice-principal said. His nameplate was in front of David, but almost as a form of protest, David didn’t read it. He had a goatee with grey hair peeking through and was going bald and looked exactly like someone who would give him a hard time about sleeping. 

“I don’t know if a biological need can be against the rules,” David said. 

That went over great. 

After a long tirade on the importance of school, Mr. Whoever said, “Since you are new and don’t know our rules, you are getting off with a warning. If there’s another offense, you will have a morning detention.” 

David was already getting up to leave but stopped. “Morning?” 

“Most students work after school. It’s a courtesy to our students who work.”

Stellar. 

By the time it was over there was no point in going back to class. David carried all his books with him, even though the school building was tiny and his locker actually closed, so he just left. No one stopped him as he headed out back to the parking lot. 

The buses weren’t there yet, but almost as soon as he stepped outside, a white car crept out from the back and slowly drove toward him. It quickly became clear from the duct taped bumper that it was Spot’s. David wasn’t sure what to do--hide? But before he could make a decision, Spot parked and got out of the car and sharply gestured for him to get in. 

It seemed like a great way to get murdered--getting in a car with someone who was very angry at him--but David didn’t have much better to do, so he walked up to the car. 

“What are you doing here?” 

Spot was shifting from foot to foot. “Trying to leave. I don’t want to be here when all the good boys and girls come out. Get in.” 

“Why?” 

“Because they’ll try to get me to run from Prom King. Get in.”

David hesitated long enough to hear voices and commotion behind him and Spot’s eyes dart over his shoulder. He only lost focus for a second. He leaned toward David and hissed, “Get in or I will drive off and tell Wiesel you were smoking dope all morning.” 

“That would get me fired!” 

“Yeah. Get in.” 

Decision made, David opened the door and shut it in time to hear someone yell, “Hey, Spot! Back from the dead?” As soon as the door closed, Spot slammed the gas and gunned it out of the parking lot.

Spot looked back at the school and laughed. "They're definitely talking about you now." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this I <3 you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags!

Driving away from the high school in Spot's car felt like a John Hughes movie, with Spot as the rebel hero and David as the wet blanket. It was one thing to be a loser by New York standards but being a loser by Greeley standards was getting old. 

“What was that about?” 

They were no longer driving like they were fleeing a crime, but Spot didn’t drive in the same laid back way that he did in the mornings. He was leaning forward, looking around as he wove away from town. 

“What?” 

“‘Back from the dead?’”

“Oh. I don’t know. Did you see who said it?” 

“No.”

“Well, then how would I know?”

David looked out the window at Main Street. There were some people on the sidewalk, but David would never get used to how empty this place was, even in the middle of the day. “Um, so are you going to kill me?”

“Oh yeah,” Spot said, turning slowly off onto a road David had never been on before. “Don’t forget, I’m the one who grew up here. I know all the good places to hide a body.” 

The road didn’t get any more familiar and it became no clearer why David was in this car. “Seriously. What is happening?” 

Spot jutted his thumb at the backseat. David turned around. The backseat was cluttered with crushed takeout containers and random clothes. 

“You want me to clean your car?” 

“The magazines. We’re going to practice so you don’t fuck up my entire day again.”

David looked again and saw a stack of magazines half hidden by the sweatshirt Spot was wearing that morning. “Did I fuck up your day?” 

“No, my boss  _ loved  _ that I was twenty minutes late for work. I got promoted.” 

“You have another job?” Spot gestured vaguely at himself and David noticed that he was wearing a crimson polo with the name of the local hospital embroidered on it. “Wait, what does a sixteen-year-old do a hospital?” 

“I’m head of surgery. Doogie Houser was inspired by me.” 

“Doogie Houser came out when you were nine.”

“Yeah, and--” It was clear that another sarcastic comment was coming, but Spot trailed off and turned onto a country road. “When are you going to quit?” 

He turned around in the seat and watched Greeley recede behind him. He didn’t even know if they were going to a place that had a gas station with a phone he could use. Les would be home from the after school program at five-thirty and he would worry if David wasn’t there. If he did make it out of this alive, he would come home a major problem.

David hadn’t made a concerted effort to get to know the outer area, but he truly had no idea where they were going now. “Um, you’re not actually going to kill me are you?” 

“No. We’re not going to practice on my routes though. Some of my customers know my car.” 

“I need to tell my brother where I am,” David said. 

“Oh sure,” Spot said, “Just use my cell phone.”

“You have a cell phone?”

“ _ No.  _ When. are. you. quitting. Don’t bullshit me. You’re not planning on being a paper boy for the rest of your life. I don’t think you’re even thinking about being a paper boy for the rest of the year.”

His father always told him not to lie, even if a lie would make things easier for him. He wasn’t sure what the stance on lying was when you were in a moving car with someone who was furious about having to train you for a job you were planning on quitting very soon. To be safe, he told the truth. 

He carefully watched Spot’s reaction as he said, “I’m saving up to buy a bike so I can get another job in town.” Spot nodded and took a laborious deep breath. He started to say something, but then took a deep breath again. “I need money so I can make money,” David rushed on, “this was the only job I could get so my parents could use their car to go to work.”

  
“And you need money for…” Spot trailed off.

David knew it was the wrong answer before he said it. 

  1. He didn’t need to help with the bills most of the time.
    1. Especially now that their living costs were down and both his parents were working.
  2. Working just to save money for college was a luxury.
    1. Even considering going to college was a luxury
  3. The truth would not help matters right now. 

“College,” David said. 

Another deep, deep breath. 

“Okay,” Spot said. “I’m still going to help you.”

“Why?” 

Spot didn’t answer. David could see a town approaching and started planning for how he could convince Spot to let him out at a gas station to use their phone and leave a message for Les at home. Not that Les would ever check the answering machine, or answer the phone even if he heard it ring. 

“Because I’m a good Catholic boy,” Spot eventually said. “And I’m the best damn thing there is at this job, it’s my obligation to share my knowledge.”

“Really?”

“Fifty percent that, fifty percent self-preservation.”

There was a gas station at the edge of town, and without being asked, Spot pulled up. David went inside and didn’t even have to work hard to get the cashier to let him use their phone. Out of guilt, he bought two cookies and cream candy bars. When he was done, she pulled a shiny card with a sparkling picture of Jesus out of the pocket of her green vest and gave him a wide smile. “God bless,” she said. 

David got in the car and handed Spot one candy bar and the card. 

Spot turned the card over. “I’ve already found Jesus Christ,” he said. 

“You can keep him.”

“You a heathen?”

“I’m Jewish?” 

Spot turned and looked him over, like there was some visible sign of his Judaism on his face. “Are you related to the Jacobs?” 

That basically confirmed they were the only Jewish family in town. “I am a Jacobs. Does everyone know everything about each other?” 

“Everyone except you.”

They were in a town that David had never been to before because it was where the big houses were. They were close together and had wide driveways. Looking down the street, David calculated that he would make as much driving down this one block as he’d make in ten minutes of driving on his route. Spot slowed down to a paper throwing rate. 

“I have two hours, but I’d like to eat at some point. So we’re going to start with your terrible aim. Get some magazines. I’m driving.” 

Spot pulled back onto the street and gestured for David to roll his window down. “I need rubber bands,” David said. Spot lifted his right arm, revealing that he had rubber bands around his wrist. 

David stared dumbly. “Take them,” Spot demanded. 

David went to use one hand to hold Spot’s arm up, but decided against unnecessary physical contact. Carefully, he grasped the rubber bands and pulled them off Spot’s arm. He had an irregular tan line that could have been from a watch, or a bracelet or even rubber bands. The second he had all the rubber bands off, he pulled away and started wrapping newspapers. 

“That was impressive,” Spot said. 

“What?” David tossed a magazine out the window. It hit someone’s mailbox. 

“You have a little brother?”

“Yeah. Les. He’s nine.” 

“Do you take care of him?” 

It was kind of a weird question, but David answered anyway. “Not really? Sometimes? I mean he’s old enough to do pretty much everything himself.” 

“Is it just you two?” 

He’d been asked a lot of questions about his family when he first got to town, but not these specific questions. “Um, no? My parents came with us. My older sister, Sarah, she’s still in New York. City, I mean. She’s staying with friends to finish high school.” 

“But you’re not.” 

“I didn’t--I still have two years. But we’re probably going back to the city. I mean, hopefully as soon as possible. Do you have siblings?”

Spot nodded. “I have seven to nine siblings.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

Spot laughed. “Okay, so you  _ really  _ aren’t from here.” David looked at him and missed throwing a magazine. “That would be fifty cents out of your paycheck,” Spot said. He didn’t look at all bothered by what he was saying. “Aren’t people talking about me at school?” 

David had gotten into trouble in New York more than once for being a snoop. In a city where everyone may as well have “Mind your own” floating above their head in giant letters, he was always asking,  _ why, how, when, who, _ and all the other w’s. Greeley didn’t seem that different, and in an attempt to get through junior and hopefully not senior year without too much trouble, he’d kept to himself. But Spot had been not so subtly hinting at something, and David couldn’t help feeling he wanted David to ask.

“I don’t talk to anyone at school. What would people say if I did?” 

“That I’m  _ awesome.  _ If you pretend to believe that my sisters’ kids are my mom’s kids, I have nine siblings. If you don’t--which would make you everyone--I have seven.” 

“Okay but even-- _ seven?  _ How is that possible?”

“Irish Catholic. Also, they got started young. My oldest sister is 33. I think there are like, fourteen people living in their house right now.”

“Oh,” David said. He remembered Spot’s earlier question, “Do you like, take care of your nieces and nephews?”

“Fuck no,” Spot said. He pointed to a lawn jockey. “Try to knock that over.” 

They drove through the neighborhood and David’s aim steadily improved. They spent the last fifteen minutes with David driving and throwing papers at the same time while Spot put rubber bands on. It was slower going, but not as difficult as David expected. When Spot said they had to go back to Greeley, David pulled over to switch drivers, but Spot waved him off. 

“I’m going to close my eyes. You can drive in a straight line.”

“Do you want to come over to dinner?” David waited for a response but none came. He looked over and saw that Spot was already slumped down in the passenger seat, asleep. 

  
  


\----

  
  


The next morning was much easier than the one before. After three days, David’s body was used to waking up in the dark and running on bad coffee. He even thought ahead and brought a few cassettes. 

Spot looked through his cassettes while he drove. David kept looking over while he did, even though he should be focused on throwing papers. Spot should be focused on driving, but he seemed to be able to do forty things at once. It was light enough that he could see which cassette Spot was looking at, and he backtracked to figure out what conclusions he could draw from David’s Offspring cassette. 

It could have been that he was imagining things, but all day at school David felt eyes on him. He didn’t hear his name though, and no one came up to him and called him any names or defaced his locker. No one even spoke to him until he went to the library at lunch time. 

The “grow up it’s the 90’s” girl came up to his table and sat down. David eyed her carefully. She was the only person in school who’d said anything remotely pro-gay since he arrived, and he had to imagine there were rumors about her. Not that he would know. 

“Hey,” she said. She reached into her overalls and pulled out a tube of Starburst. “Take any color you want.”

David took it from her and took out an orange piece. “What was your name again?”

“Smalls. Well, Amanda Van Denburg,” she said, “but everyone calls me Smalls.” He looked her over, clearly not very subtly because she smiled and said, “I used to be short. I’m average sized now, obviously. It’s a nickname from when I was a kid. When Spot and I were kids. We were the shortest kids in class, so they called us Spot and Smalls. It’s from a book.” 

It was definitely the most anyone in this school under the age of eighteen had said to him since the first few weeks. 

“Oh,” David said, “okay. Are you guys friends?”

Smalls shrugged. “As much as we can be with him working sixteen hours a day. I only really see him if his hours get cut at Storky’s. But you guys are friends?”

David thought of Spot refusing to look at him, then less than twelve hours later talking to him like they were old friends. “No,” he said, “He's just training me at the, at the paper throwing...business.” 

Smalls wrinkled his nose. “That’s a terrible job. And if Spot is the only thing you have close to a friend, you could probably use me. To be friends with me. I’ve never been new at a school, but I know from books and TV it can be really hard. Have you been doing okay?”

She was speaking at a normal volume, but even though anyone could hear them no one was looking at her. They were the only ones in the library anyway, except for someone who was sleeping at a table, and the library behind the desk on the other side of the room. 

“I’m doing fine,” David whispered, hoping she would catch the hint. 

Smalls nodded. “Is New York really like they say it is?” 

“How do they say it is?” David asked. He knew the answer, to some extent. He’d been asked if apartments had bedrooms. He’d been asked how many times he’d been mugged. He’d been asked how many of his friends had AIDS and did drugs. 

“That there are gay bars and stuff?” Smalls asked, voice dropping to a whisper so quiet David barely heard her. 

David looked around, checking that there was no one around. He was careful in New York, where there was in fact a gay bar on their block, and his parents brought them to the Pride March in June. Even though it was 1996, and New York was better than most everywhere else, he was careful. Even more so in Greeley. Even before he stepped through the high school doors and heard slurs within first period. It was 1996, and the president his parent’s loved signed the Defense Of Marriage Act less than a month ago. He knew what the world was, and he knew to keep his mouth shut. 

“I guess,” David said. 

Smalls’ eyes glowed. “And the march? That happens?”

Smalls was gay. She had to be. Did she know about him? Did she see it somehow, even though he wasn’t being nearly as obvious as she was?    
  


“I don’t know, I guess. Don’t they cover it in the newspaper here?” 

“Have you--” Smalls cut herself off, looking over his shoulder. David turned around and saw that a group of guys had walked in. She clammed up. Leaning foward she quietly said, “People talk about Spot, just so you know. They might start talking about you, now that they saw you with him. I have your back, okay?” 

So there was something besides egomania to what Spot was saying? “What does that mean?” David asked. 

“You’re not alone, even if you want to be,” Smalls said, “In more ways than one.” 

It took forty minutes for David to find out what she meant. Even though the high school had far fewer students than high school back home, it was overcrowded and walking through passing periods without touching anymore required careful focus, which was quickly evaporating with each day since David started his job. So when he knocked shoulders with some girl with wild dark hair, it took enormous effort to say, “Sorry, my mistake.” 

She looked him up and down and rolled her eyes. “Queer,” she said, under her breath, and walked past him. 

  1. David had been so careful
  2. He barely looked at anyone, much less touched anyone
  3. Whenever anything at all to do with gays or homos or--anything--came up David was careful to mirror the behavior of everyone else, barring being a total dick
  4. This girl was not at that one party that one time
  5. He was so
  6. So
  7. Careful 

David stood stuck in one spot. He thought to look around and see if anyone heard her, but the world streamed on around him. He went through the motions for the rest of the day and threw himself into his homework when he got home. With only a few hours of sleep, the days felt impossibly long, and when he woke up at three, it felt like he was still in the same long horrible day that started on Monday when he woke up for work. 

When he got to the distribution center Spot was asleep in his car. David tapped on the window and Spot cracked his eyes open, closed them, opened them again and slowly got out of the car. 

“Hey sunshine,” he said. “Heard you have a new friend.”

“Someone called me a queer at school today,” David said. He hadn’t told his family, and even though Smalls kept trying to get his attention after lunch, he didn’t tell her. He knew why he was telling Spot, but it still felt like a step too far to do it. 

Spot sighed and cracked his neck. “Sounds like a typical day at that cesspit.”

“Do people think you’re gay?” 

He grinned, “Yep. Still want to get in a car with me?” 

“I don’t care if you’re gay,” David said. "It is a natural occurrence." 

“Good for you,” Spot said, walking into the distribution center. “You, me, Smalls, we can start a club. Naturally occurring freaks.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Smalls is from the show, but Spot and David are absolutely their 92sies selves so I am keeping this untagged as the musical. HEY I LOVE YOU FOR READING THIS AND I LOVE YOU FOR COMMENTING


	4. Chapter 4

The three of them didn’t start a club. Not exactly. 

What happened was, David finished out his week of training with Spot. Spot was a little too pleased to learn that rumors were still swirling about him at school, especially considering that they have splashed back against David now. 

“I got the bells wrong,” Spot said when he realized how upset David was. “It was dumb luck that you were outside before everyone else got out. When I pulled up, I thought that I had enough time to get you in the car before everyone else got out. I didn’t know you’d ask so many damn questions.”

They were trying to have the conversation while David was attempting to do the entire paper throwing routine by himself, and Spot was apparently attempting to sleep and hold a very distracting conversation at the same time. More than once, David threw a paper to a house that didn’t get one, and they had to stop the car and fish it back. Finally, David pulled over on the side of the road and looked at Spot in the dark. 

“Why would people think I was gay if because I got in your car?” 

Spot sighed and held out his hands for some papers and rubber bands. When David handed them over, he started wrapping them as he talked. “I figured you already knew.” 

“How would I know?”   
  


“Because--I thought you knew about the AIDS thing? That was why you contorted yourself to not touch me when you took the rubber bands the other day.” 

David’s heart stopped. He backtracked through the past five days and figured out whether he’d touched Spot at any point. It would be so fucking unfair for him to die without having done anything to earn a gay disease. 

“I don’t have AIDS you dumb fuck,” Spot snapped. 

“Why do people think you have AIDS?” David demanded. 

“I had meningitis freshman year,” Spot said. 

Meningitis--that was brain infection where your neck got stiff? What was gay about that, maybe his neck got stick from blowjobs?  _ What?  _

“What?”

“It was a very gay thing to do. Almost as gay as getting in a car with the town homo.” Spot put the papers down and started ticking off on his fingers. “I was hospitalized. I lost a bunch of weight. The only other person who got meningitis everyone had already decided was gay, ergo I got it from him, ergo I got it from gay stuff with him. That turned into it being AIDS. Everyone in this town is dumb and bigoted as bricks.”

David tried to understand how an entire town could decide someone had AIDS based on what Spot had said. A childhood in 1980’s New York meant the knew what AIDS was before he knew what sex was. It was the town ghost, and he’d imagined that out in upstate New York, their boogie men were actual ghost stories, not stories about the downstairs neighbors being found dead after the winter. 

He was smart enough to know that if he was gay in a different time, it might be different. But it wasn’t a different time, and he didn’t live in a different place. He could be gay when he grew up, if it maybe wasn’t a death sentence. Not now, and certainly not here. 

David pulled over and stopped the car. Spot groaned. “Jesus Christ, I was just beginning to think I might not get fired today.” 

“Are you alright?” David asked. 

“Not if I lose my job, no.”

“From the meningitis.” 

“I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“What about the other guy?”

“He isn’t. You won’t be either if you don’t do your fucking job.” 

They didn’t talk about it again until the last half hour of David’s last day of training. Friday at school had passed without incident, aside from Smalls joining him at this table at the library during lunch and playing her music loud enough that David could hear it through his headphones. 

He needed to work two and a half weeks to be able to afford a bike, according to the ad in the paper for one at the town sporting good store. Spot said there would probably be cheaper ones that weren’t in the ad. 

“I could probably steal a bike from my parents’ house,” Spot said, “they have this shed out back that’s just full of shit from kids they’ve shed.” 

David didn’t miss the language. Spot did not live with his parents. “Would that be easy for you to do?” 

“It wouldn’t be  _ easy,  _ but I can do it.” 

He shook his head. “I don’t like owing people.” 

They were quiet on the last day. David didn’t have anything he urgently wanted to say. He wasn’t attached to Spot, he didn’t even consider them friends, but it was kind of sad. He didn’t think they’d really see each other again. 

It was Spot who broke the silence, as they were driving back to the distribution center. 

“Are you going to ask?” 

He wasn’t completely playing dumb when he said, “Ask what?”

“If I’m gay.” 

“Oh,” David said. “I mean, does it really matter?” 

“Yeah, it fucking matters. Doesn’t it matter to you?”

“If you’re gay?”

“If you are, David.” 

  1. Percent of Americans thought who thought gay people shouldn’t be 
    1. In the armed forces: 37%
    2. Doctors: 42%
    3. Clergy: 50%
    4. Elementary school teachers: 54%
    5. High school teachers: 52%
    6. A member of the president’s cabinet: 39%
  2. 68% of Americans thought same-sex marriage should not be legal
  3. 44% of Americans thought relationships between gay and lesbian couples should not be legal

His heartbeat drummed in his ears. No one had ever asked him before. He’d been accused in playground taunts, like any other boy regardless of where he grew up. But no one had ever asked. He’d never had to explain himself. Spot wasn’t even directly asking now, but it was a statement that required a response. 

“It does not matter,” David said, “Not here. Not right now.” 

“Yeah,” Spot said softly. “Maybe someday.”   
  


* * *

For three weeks David showed up at the distribution center and drove his route. He went to school and did homework in every second he could snatch with the idea of college on the horizon like a carrot on a stick. Spot was there too, but they didn’t really talk. It was like the impossibly long and hard week never happened. 

Smalls didn’t go anywhere though. He hadn’t noticed, but she was on his bus route so they started sitting together. In the mornings they didn’t talk, and Smalls woke him up when they got to school. But they talked in the library, and on the bus ride home. 

He heard a rumor that he gave a trucker a blow job at the gas station on the other side of town, but it helped that he was able to tell Smalls and watch her face break into a grin when she asked, “Did he give you his number at least?” The rumor blew over when a freshman, who Smalls told him was Spot’s nephew, got caught making copies of porn in the staff room. 

Smalls told him that Spot’s last name was Conlon and, in accordance with the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, David noticed that about a quarter of their high school was related to him. Smalls told him that two freshmen in addition to the porn one were his nieces, and that the senior class president was one of the nephews that the town pretended to think was a brother. There was a weird reputation of extremes surrounding the entire clan, as every single member seemed to get called into the office for trouble or accolades at some point. 

In one of the two minute periods that David saw Spot in a given day, he brought it up. Spot rolled his eyes. “We’re an extreme people. I have a brother who's running for mayor of a shit-town an hour out, and I’ve got a sister who is serving life.” 

“Which extreme are you?” David asked. 

He shrugged, “Depends on the day.” 

“My family is kind of extreme too,” David offered, “but we’re the organize a labor strike and be on a first-name basis with our representative’s staff type.” 

“Cool,” Spot said sarcastically. 

They didn’t talk for a few days after that. 

He and Smalls spent time together outside of school for the first time on Halloween. Halloween here was different than it was back home, and Smalls promised to lead Les on the most profitable Halloween experience could offer. 

After they got home and Les was inside counting his candy, he and Smalls sat on the porch steps and waited for her step-mom to come get her. Small smoked as she talked, and when a shadow passed over the closed curtains behind them, she drew the cigarette down to her side as though the trail of smoke tangling in her hair was not a dead giveaway. 

“There was another lesbian here before,” Smalls said, “she had short hair. She was from Rhode Island. She was--I guess the word is butch? No one ever messed with her. No one knew what to do with her. It was like she broke the rules so hard, they couldn’t throw them in her face because they didn’t even apply.” 

Privately, David thought that couldn’t possibly be true. “Did you date her?” 

Smalls exhaled a stream of smoke. “I mean, dating is going to the movies and getting dinner at Storky’s. We didn’t do that. But we were together. She left. But we were together. What about you?”

“I’ve never dated a butch lesbian from Rhode Island.” 

“I’m serious.”

He found himself a little wary at the chance to talk about this. Even though people had kind of found out when they were caught in the backroom at that party a few weeks before David moved, no one ever called him up wanting to gab. 

“There was somebody,” David said, “We didn’t date either. But yeah.”

“Yeah.” 

* * *

On November 7th David started his day by telling Spot that it was his last day at the distribution center. Spot sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I’m proud to have trained you for a career that lasted three weeks. Do you have another job at least?”

“At the movie theater.”

“Cool, you can get me in right?” 

“Yeah, no sweat. Are you going to have to train the next guy?” 

Spot snorted. “Nah,” he said, “some of Oscar’s customers complained because their lawns were peppered with old magazines. He’s next up.” 

“So I’ll see you at the movie theater sometime?” 

“Yeah,” Spot said, clapping him on the arm, “we’ll see each other around.”   
  


* * *

Smalls turned out to be David’s favorite friend of all time. 

She didn’t have a car, but she didn’t work either and was more than happy to ride on the back of David’s bike to the movie theater and watch  _ Romeo + Juliet  _ every day for two weeks. When it got slow, his boss didn’t mind if she sat in the booth with him and worked through the expired candy. 

“Don’t your parents care that you’re never home?” David asked her on a Saturday that she’d been at the theater watching every screening of  _ 101 Dalmatians  _ back to back. 

Smalls threw a Rolo wrapper at him. “They finished parenting eight years before I was born. They are just fine with me being Miss Independent. I could show up with a crew cut and my boobs cut off and they wouldn’t say boo.”

David laughed, then took in that Smalls wasn’t laughing. She had long curling hair and sometimes wore the same pink and white striped shirt twice in a week, but not often enough that it was noticeable to anyone but him. He couldn’t imagine her wanting to cut...anything off. 

“Are you serious?” 

She crushed a Rolo between her teeth and chewed slowly. “We can’t really be serious about any of this stuff here. There are women in crew cuts in the city, aren’t there?” 

“There must be.” 

Smalls nodded. “Someday, then.”

* * *

His high school didn’t even pretend anyone didn’t celebrate Christmas. They played Christmas carols over the intercom between classes. Sarah came out at the beginning of December for a few nights of Hannukah and just the way she talked made David desperately miss New York. 

She had a newly minted fake ID that she used to furnish him and Smalls with a variety pack of wine coolers. The two of them broke them in after Shabbat, after everyone had gone to bed, so he could tell Smalls which one was the best. 

Sarah curled up on Aunt Talia’s couch and tousled her long hair away from her face. She’d started wearing Doc Martens and hadn’t taken them off since she’d arrived. “Are you doing okay out here?” 

David shrugged. They’d been exchanging letters, so she knew about his jobs and the rumors around school. He knew she had a boyfriend and was finishing high school in a night program so she could work full time at a dress store, but hadn’t told their parents. 

He’d told her that the rumors had faded to half-hearted stories and notes passed with dicks drawn on them. No one had anything to accuse him of except hanging out with a girl no one even thought was a lesbian, and getting in a car with Spot months ago. Spot saying that they’d see each other around turned out to be more of a pleasantry than an actual promise. He saw the white sedan around town a few times, but never close enough to approach. It wasn’t pleasant sometimes, but they had other things to whisper about. The Conlons made sure of that. 

Sarah looked over her shoulder before turning back to him. “Why don’t you just come back with me? I’ve been here for twenty-seven hours and I can see that it sucks.” 

He reached for a strawberry wine cooler in her hand. “And what, sleep on the floor in Maria’s room? I know you’re on the couch.” 

She shook her head, checking over her shoulder again. “I don’t live with Maria anymore. I live with Jack. He has his own place.”

“The seventeen-year-old high school dropout has his own place?”

“The seventeen-year-old high school dropout who has published seven cowboy novels? Yes. He does. And it has a free couch.” 

“Is the couch in the same room as the bed you are having unwed sex on?” 

“No, it’s not. Just think about it, okay? You can’t stay out here for another year and a half.”

Despite feeling like he was barely alive the entire time they’d been in Greeley, David felt the need to defend it. He had a friend, but he had friends at home too. He had a job, but his job in New York paid better. Maybe the school was a little better, but he didn’t walk through the halls waiting for something to happen. Or at least, not the same things. 

Sarah looked at him with wide eyes and gestured for him to say something. 

“It’s very pretty here,” he says, “you don’t get views like this in the city.” 

Sarah fell back on the couch and sighed. “Offer stands, okay?” 

She left and David got extra hours over winter break, and his boss practically keeled over when he offered to work Christmas Eve. His family always went out to dinner on Christmas Eve, but the only restaurants in town were closed, so his parents didn’t mind. His boss correctly promised a slow night, the screening of  _ Jerry Macguire _ was empty and the only people seeing  _ Scream  _ were a handful of stoned teenagers. 

Twenty minutes before it was time to close--early enough at 8:30 for him to get home at a reasonable time--Smalls ran through the glass doors and skittered to a stop in front of David where he was sweeping up popcorn. She took deep breaths before stuttering out, “Party. Party. We’re going to a party.” 

The stoned teenagers streamed out, which forced David to wait before saying, “What the hell? You have another friend I don’t know about?” 

Smalls grinned and grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “No, one you do know about. There’s a legit, actual, party happening in Spot’s apartment tonight. Do you have any candy we can bring? Oh no! The popcorn. Let’s bring the popcorn. He said it was BYOB but he knows we don’t have B to B.” 

She hung around, jumping from foot to foot while David closed and asked questions. 

  1. Don’t your parents care that you’re not home for Christmas?
    1. No dumbass, they’re visiting my half brother in Connecticut. 
  2. Spot doesn’t live in his car?
    1. Christ, it looks like it doesn’t it? But no, he actually lives in an apartment above the shoe store with some weirdos! Yeah, no one knows it because he leaves butt early in the morning and never goes home, but yeah!
  3. Is it going to be a gay party?
    1. God, I hope so. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David's stats  
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx  
Did he cite them exactly right? No, he's 16 and this is the inside of his brain! 
> 
> Idk if this will be 5 or 6 chapters! The end is already written, we just gotta see how long it takes to get there. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. Your comments mean so much to me <3


	5. Chapter 5

Smalls had driven her dad’s Toyota into town, so they loaded David’s bike into the back, along with four buckets of popcorn. Before they left the theater, David used the phone to call his parents to ask to go out instead of coming home. 

“Repeat that, please,” Dad said after he explained what he wanted to do. “I want you to hear what you just asked permission to do.” 

He hoped that Dad could hear him rolling his eyes through the phone.

1\. “I want to go to a party at a friend’s apartment."

2\. "His name is Spot Conlon. I don’t know his real name."

3\. "You saw him drop me off at the house once."

4\. "He’s sixteen and lives with friends, but I haven’t met them. I have not been to his apartment before, but I know it’s above the shoe store."

5\. "If I don’t go, Smalls--Amanda--will go alone. We are going to take her dad’s car. There might be drinking, but I don’t plan to drink.” 

Dad made a noise that could have been a sigh or could have been a laugh. “David, we really need to work on your ability to tell a compelling story.”

“You told me not to lie.”

“I did, but there are many ways to tell the truth. Based on the way you told me about this party, it sounds like you don’t want to go.” 

“I do! I just want you to be fully aware of what I am going in to.” 

“Do you _ want _to go into this?” 

David wasn’t totally sure. Maybe he just wanted to make sure Smalls was okay. She talked a big game, but she was still a small town girl whose main social experience were with him and Spot and she had gotten fall down drunk on one drink during their weekday experiment with the wine coolers earlier in the month. Maybe he was still considering Sarah’s offer, and wanted to see what it looked like for a teenager to live away from home. Maybe he was curious for evidence that Spot resided or ate or acted like a normal human being, or even existed after November 7th. 

Maybe he just wanted something to do on what other people considered one of the holiest days of the year. 

“I’ll be careful,” David promised, “I still have my bike. I can come home if I need to.” 

Dad hummed. “If you drink--” 

“I won’t.”

“I want you to call me, or walk to Smalls' house. She lives just a mile outside town, correct? Do not drive, and do not leave Smalls alone with any boys you don’t know. Why don’t you just plan on spending the night at her house, yes? She shouldn’t be alone at Christmas.” 

It wasn’t unusual for Dad to place this must trust in him, and David decided not to push it. He agreed to the terms and updated Smalls on them while they drove the half-mile to the shoe store. She agreed a little too readily, and started outlining all the places in her house that he could sleep when they went to her house up to and including her parent’s bed. She found the door to the upstairs apartments like she’d been there before, and left herself into Spot’s apartment. 

Music he didn’t recognize was playing from a stereo that was balanced on top of two milk cartons turned on their sides with stacks of CDs inside. He clocked that the apartment was large enough that it must cover more than the narrow shoe store below it. They walked through a galley kitchen where they put down the popcorn, into the living room, where four guys were sitting around a bright pastel-colored board game surrounded by an assortment of cheap beers. None of them were Spot. 

David was prepared for someone to snap at them to get out, but instead, a boy with matted strawberry blond hair and an eyepatch jumped up and sang, “Smallllllls,” sweeping her into a hug. 

Smalls hugged him back, bouncing on her feet as she did. She looked over his shoulder and gasped. “You’re playing The Babysitters Club game!”

“As promised,” said a guy with dark hair and pale skin who David could tell was short even though he was sitting down. “You wanted us to play next time we were tall together, and we don’t let you down.” 

Smalls shook off her jacket and kicked off her boots before sitting cross-legged on the floor. She waved a distracted arm back to the kitchen. “We brought popcorn from David’s work.” 

The short guy regarded him with raised eyebrows. “Oh is this David? Worst paper boy ever David? I’m Anthony, David. Come sit down.”

Feeling a flush on his face, David gently placed his coat over where Smalls had dropped hers on the floor, and put his shoes next to hers. He found a place on a divan that might be a therapy couch in a cartoon, next to a muscular boy with tight curly hair. He offered his hands. “Michael Meyers,” he said, “I go to Beverly CC. This,” he pointed to a gangly guy who was examining a game piece, “is Arthur Skitters, and Mr. Friendly himself is Louie Balleti.” 

All the guys looked like they were maybe a few years older than them, but none of them looked for sure like they were gay. Smalls hadn’t mentioned that she knew any of them, but she was leaning against Louie like they were old friends. That was kind of Smalls though, she just fast tracked her way into your life if she wanted to. 

David nodded and offered, “David Jacobs. I’m friends with Smalls, and Spot, I guess. Where is he?” 

Anthony gestured to the narrow hallway with three doors behind the couch. “He’s been taking a five-minute nap for the past hour and a half. Piece of shit hasn’t worked all day, he could have maybe napped before me and Skittery showed up? But noooooo, guess they don’t cover social skills in the Conlon house.” 

Michael raised his hand and stood up. “I’ll wake him up. It’s part of my duty as the nice roommate.” 

“I’m nice!” Louie said loudly. Michael climbed over him and went down the hall. 

1\. The apartment wasn’t as small as the New York apartments that David was used to, but the mismatched furniture and tchotchkes that looked like they came from are series of garage sales.

2\. It was strangely cluttered for an apartment that was apparently populated by young guys.

3\. David found himself fixated on a collection of ceramic elephants that lined a shelf on the wall across from him. 

Spot walked into his line of sight, tugging a flannel over his shirt and yawning. He briefly looked at David before following his view line to the elephants. 

“Those aren’t ours,” Spot said, like they hadn’t seen each other for almost two months. “We inherited this place.” 

“Hey Spot,” David said. 

Spot waved at him with two fingers, and walked into the kitchen. He came back out with two buckets of the stale popcorn and took the seat next to David that Michael had vacated. He’d brought three beer cans in one of the buckets, and passed them out to him and Smalls. 

“_ Hi Spot _,” she said pointedly. 

“What?”

“He_ llo. _Glad to see you still have arms and a face.” 

“We talked on the phone two hours ago.” 

“You don’t need arms and a face to do that. We didn’t even have time to confirm the rumors I heard about. Jemilla Watson told me you’re a kept boy for the mayor now.” 

David had not heard this rumor, nor anyone in town named Jemilla. He suspected she was making things up, which was confirmed when Spot shot back. “Yeah, no not until he ponies up for my new teeth. That’s just a win-win for both of us. I heard from Martin Marks that you got caught snorting coke in the teacher’s lounge.” 

“It was crack actually. I heard from Father Whatawaste that you confessed all your sins and are subsiding only on consecrated wafers.” 

“Wine too. I heard you’re hanging out with the queer from the city and he’s your new best friend.” 

“Yeah that’s ‘cause I see him more than once a year.” 

Spot started to reply but Michael sat straight up from where he’d been leaning over the coffee table. “Hey, you found another homosexual?” he asked, clear excitement in his voice. 

He suddenly found himself being stared at by everyone at the table. He wasn’t exactly the president of gay society, but he knew that outing someone was wrong and Spot had just done it. He’d never really told Spot, not directly. And Smalls knew, that didn’t mean he wanted all of these guys to. 

“Oh don’t worry,” Michael rushed to say. He pointed to himself, and each guy in turn. “Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.” 

Arthur, the fourth gay objected, “Not really. No. Not exclusively.”

“Bisexuality isn’t real, Skittery,” Anthony snapped. “Make up your mind.” 

“I’m not gay,” David said. “I’ve never--I’m not. I’m not gay.” 

Spot leaned over and nudged the beer in David’s hand, and the pressure on the other side of the can was almost like Spot touching him. “Yeah, David is from somewhere even more backward and violently homophobic than Greeley. Poor guy is from Manhattan. I don’t think he’s ever met a homosexual before tonight,” he said, leaning hard into an accent he didn’t truly have. 

“It’s not like, the main thing about me,” David said. 

“Sure,” Louie said, “don’t mean it’s nothing. Can we fucking play? I’ve been waiting my entire life for this.” 

The game only allowed four players. Louie and Michael paired up, leaning shoulders against each other as they played. David counted doors, and figured out that there were only two bedrooms for the apartment they shared with Spot. They were a couple. Smalls made it extremely clear that she would not tolerate pairing up, so he ended up playing with Arthur, who put very little effort in. Even though there wasn’t a clear way to win, Spot and Anthony were relentlessly competitive and stopped playing several times to determine if the other had cheated. 

They played eleven rounds, until everyone knew the answers to the trivia questions, and Smalls and Anthony developed an alternate Babysitters Club reality from which they had to base their answers, and only Smalls could decide if their answers were correct. Even Spot got excited about the question of whether minors could buy grilled cheese in this world, and when David tried to make fun of him, he was met with five individual glares. 

The universe was just beginning to devolve over a disagreement of whether there was a Gap in the mall, when Spot checked his watch and said, “Okay, I gotta head.” 

“Boooo,” Louie jeered. “This is the dumbest Christmas tradition.” 

Spot stood up and downed the rest of his beer. His fifth. “It’s the original Christmas tradition, so fuck you. I’ll be back in an hour.” 

“What kind of self-hating homosexual leaves a gathering of the gays to go to a _ Catholic church. _ Not to mention you’re dressed like a total sinner. _ ” _

Spot ignored him and walked through the kitchen. David twisted so he could see him pulling on his boots. “You shouldn’t drive,” he shouted. 

“Sacred Heart is a walk,” Spot yelled back, “If I come back straight, shoot me.” 

Without examining his motives, and the easy excuse that he was approaching drunk, David stood up. “Can I come with you?”

After a pause, Spot appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, looking more surprised than David thought possible with his shut down face. “Why?” 

“See what all the fuss is about? I just won’t say the prayers or eat the bread.”

“The host. Communion. Yeah, you can’t do that. But we’re not going inside anyway.” 

He stood up and jammed his feet into his shoes and picked up his goat. “David, what the hell?” Smalls asked. 

“It’s just an hour,” David said, “Maybe I’ll get saved.” 

Spot looked at him, appraisingly. “If people see us together, it’s not going to help you.” 

He thought of Sarah’s offer, of how the rumors in the Fall, while annoying, never really hurt him the way holding back made his skin ache. His body felt warm, and time out in the snow would only help. 

“I can handle that.” 

The walk to Sacred Heart was unfamiliar in the dark and the snow, but Spot knew where he was going. There were parked cars that got denser as they approached the church, and once the church was in sight, David saw that it was too small to possibly hold all these people. 

“Why is there church this late?” David asked. 

“Mass,” Spot corrected, “Midnight mass. It’s just a thing. I don’t know.” 

Catholics acted like they were the only normal one when: 

1\. They held "mass" in the middle of the night 

2\. Stole most of their rituals from Pagans

3\. Acted like all other religions were fanzines of them

4\. Pretended to eat someone's body. 

As they approached, David realized that Spot’s warning about being seen together may have been unnecessary. While it was clear there were possibly hundreds of people inside the church, no one was outside except an older woman who was smoking on the steps. He could hear a church song being sung in this odd, low tone, on the inside. 

Spot bypassed the front door completely, and lead them to the side of the church, where the stained glass windows cast a rainbow of light onto the snow. Spot brushed snow off a stone bench and sat down. Pink and yellow light cast over his face and he looked younger. When he first met Spot, he thought he might be fourteen, but somehow over time, he’d looked older and more worn every time David had seen him. The way he was looking reverently up at the stained glass brought him back to the beginning. 

David looked around for somewhere to sit, but Spot just waved him over to the bench. David sat down, careful not to make physical contact. 

The singing stopped. He could hear someone talking, and he could tell they were speaking loudly, but it was impossible to understand what he was saying. He couldn’t imagine what Spot was getting out of this, but he was looking at the stained glass like he could see what was happening inside. 

“You could go inside,” David offered, “no one would throw tomatoes.” 

“I’m not _ afraid _,” Spot sneered. When David didn’t respond, he kicked at a stick on the ground and said, “No one actually does or says anything to me.” 

“So why aren’t you in school? Why don’t you live with your family?” 

Spot exhaled a cloud of air. “You are terrible at spreading Christmas cheer.” David waited. “I was always going to stop going to school. That was a given. And my family...you either stay there forever or you leave before you get stuck. I didn’t even leave that early, my brother started living with the Morris’ when he was thirteen.”

“Why would you leave? Is something going on?” 

Spot laughed. “No,” he said, “nothing except too many people and not enough to go around. If you can make it on your own, you do it. We’re actually doing it better than everyone else, it’s only in recent history that people were treated like five-year-olds for a quarter of their lives. Our ancestors worked in factories and mills from the time they could stand.”

“I’m sorry, are you harkening for the days of child labor?”

Spot blew air like a stream of smoke. “At eighteen, you’re going to be living in a dorm and crying because you ruined your clothes in the wash, and I’ll have been an adult for almost four years. Who is worse off?”

“I’ll probably live longer,” David said impulsively. 

Spot laughed hard. “Oh God. God, you’re so lucky Smalls found you. I bet you have an impossible time making friends.” 

“My sister is just a year older than me, and she lives on her own,” David said, still feeling defensive over Spot’s assertion that he was a helpless child. He’d been doing laundry before he could reach the dials. “She invited me to come out and live with her and finish high school there.” 

“Are you going?”  


“I don’t know,” David said. 

“You’d be stupid not to. Hey, don’t fucking talk, okay?” Spot looked up at the stained glass, and the blue light reflected on his face almost smoothed out the angry lines. It was almost like there was a different person inhabiting his body. David could barely hear what was happening inside his church, and sometimes he couldn’t hear anything but he could see Spot’s lips moving like he was reciting a prayer. 

David felt deeply envious. He was almost sick with it. It was like Spot was connected to this service that he wasn’t even inside, and the wall between him and the community couldn’t stop that feeling. David never felt that way about anything. Even his friends at home, the closest things he could call a community, he lied to and put walls up around. He’d seen the same look on his parent’s faces, at temple, protest, union meetings, even his mom heard a friend’s voice on the other side a bodega. David thought maybe it was because he was too smart for that, and he felt sure that it wasn’t his fault that it could never happen. Especially in Greeley. 

If Spot could stand outside a Catholic church in fuckback Greeley with rapture on his face, what the fuck was wrong with David? 

There was no life for him here where he wasn’t held apart from the world by a glass box. There were more ways around the glass in New York, even if David hadn’t found them yet. 

Two seconds before David heard the sound of people inside speaking to one another, Spot stood up and walked away from the church without a word. David followed him, and didn’t look back until, even when Spot did. 

In the apartment, Anthony was collecting bottles into a trash can and Smalls was asleep on the floor with a blanket over her. Arthur was reading a book that was so battered David couldn’t tell what color the cover was. He heard the shower running and momentarily wondered if Louie and Michael were in it together until Louie stick his head out of a bedroom door. His eyepatch was off, and David saw the scarred flesh over his eye. 

The party was over. 

David felt a little jilted. After being uninvolved and guarded early, he wanted to prove to himself that he could connect to something if he tried, but everyone was going to sleep. 

Spot picked up a piece of popcorn and threw it at Arthur. “Just sleepover,” he said, ignoring the book Arthur threw at his head. “Your parents won’t care.” 

“We’re supposed to sleep at Small’s house.” 

Spot turned to him. “Your parents would rather you sleep at a girls house than mine?”

“Well, they don’t know you.” 

Spot rolled his eyes. “Don’t be disappointed when coming out is anti-climactic.” 

Smalls stirred on the floor and groaned. She sat up and squinted at them. 

“You’re sleeping over,” Spot informed her. 

“Noooo,” Smalls groaned. “You don’t have beds for us. My house has beds for us.” 

“You’re drunk.” 

“Not really,” Smalls yawned. “Even if I was, we can walk. I don’t love you enough to sleep on your floor.” 

David certainly didn’t, but he was still disappointed to be leaving. He wasn’t particularly connected to anyone here, but it was disappointing to come into a party already over. And it was weird to know that he wouldn’t see anyone here again. 

Smalls hugged Spot tightly and said, “Don’t forget I exist, okay?” 

“I won’t,” Spot promised. 

David picked up his jacket and handed Smalls hers. As they started heading out through the galley kitchen, Anthony came out of the bedroom yelling, “You don’t have a fucking milliliter of toothpaste, Conlon.” 

“Fuck you, Racetrack, there’s nothing to be done about that breath.” David pulled the door open and stopped when Spot shouted, “Hey!” 

David looked back. 

“I’m not forgetting you exist either, David. You’re the worst paper boy on earth. It’s only up from here.” 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it Spavid by therudestflower without Christmas. 
> 
> There IS going to be one more chapter. 
> 
> rudeflower on tumblr hmu


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Attitudes and language in 1996 and 2008 are different than now, even for loving and well-meaning people. And that is okay.))

David went through a phase in college where he thought he would be on Wall Street. He used the internet to look up the salaries of alums who went to similarly competitive colleges and calculated how quickly he could pay off his student loans, and buy his parents a house. He even took enough classes to pick up an Economics minor by the time he transferred to the History department with no clear plan except to not spend his entire life looking at a computer screen.

When the recession hit in 2008, his parents occasionally teased him about how lucky it was that he didn’t commit to his whim of being in finance because he would be fucked now if he had. Of course, being a development specialist for a Pride Center during a time when everyone hoarded the little money they had, even millionaires, was not a cakewalk.

David was used to rejection. He contacted dozens of people every day and tried to sell them on the vital resources the Pride Center offered Manhattan’s LGBT youth. He had different pitches for different potential donors.

  1. Middle-class do-gooders? Just twenty dollars will pay for twelve meals for our youth.
  2. Wealthy individuals? Participants in the Pride Center’s vocational program are more likely to find full-time employment and stay off benefits.
  3. Corporations? All donations are tax-deductible. Great PR
  4. Religious organizations? Pull up their doctrine. Cite scripture. Cite principles.
  5. Never pretend to be anything but what you are if asked, but show them you know what you’re talking about.
  6. And if anyone fishes for a personal story, give it to them. Closeted teenager in the 90’s. Harassed for perceived sexuality in rural upstate. Didn’t come out until freshman year of college.
  7. Doing so much better now!

He kept index cards for everyone he made contact with and pretended to remember their conversations. Not just how much they donated, but what they said.

He was four hours into his day and only had one more phone call to make before going to lunch. No one had given up a penny, but he’d heard plenty of sob stories about their personal financial woes. He went from polite and compassionate to tightly wound. He ended his final phone call by saying, “I’m sure our youth who are living on the street would love to be worried about their credit,” and got hung up on.

It was rare that people called preemptively, just wanting to donate, so David jumped a little when his desk phone rang with the ringtone that it was coming from outside his building. So it could be a donor. With an aggravated sigh, David sat down and picked up his phone. 

“David Jacobs, Pride Center,” he said. 

Silence on the other end of the line. David turned around to find someone else in the room and caught Dominic’s eye. He lifted two fingers--possible threat call, no threat made. Four meant a threat was made, but David hadn’t had to make that signal yet. Most of the calls were pranks, and very few of the actual threats were willing to sit through being transferred to the development office. 

“Hey,” the voice said, sounding hesitant. It was probably a man’s voice, almost familiar but David still held Dominic’s eye until more was said. “Hey, I got a letter asking for my quarterly donation. I sent it in. So.” 

The voice was just brusque enough to line up with the people who made high enough quarterly donations for them to bother with mailed reminders when email was free. David waved Dominic off. 

“I’m sorry about that,” David said, “I’m happy to look up your account. May I ask who I’m speaking to?” 

“I usually deal with Marissa,” the voice said. 

“Marissa has moved on to other opportunities,” David said, the canned answer that he gave all of the donors he inherited from Marissa. Many of them were annoyed, even though Marissa was a complete disaster at her job and was still being examined for embezzlement. David never liked her, but she had a great phone voice. 

“She was fired?” the voice clarified. 

“She no longer works for us,” David said, a bit ruffled. And more annoyed to be dealing with this person when as of fifteen seconds ago, he was supposed to be at lunch. At least seventeen hours of his workweek was spent cleaning up after Marissa. “If you give me your name, or account number, I can see what’s going on.” 

“I don’t know what my account number is, man.” 

For fuck's sake, this better be a Friends level donator. “Do you know your name?” 

“Ethan Conlon.” 

David was on the first “n” in Conlon when he remembered Spot Conlon, from Greeley. He’d gone at least a year without thinking of that night, in the snow, next to Sacred Heart. The moment that kickstarted the rest of his life. There were times when he thought about Spot almost daily, and he’d referenced him in public speaking engagements right after college. His boyfriend at the time looked over his notes and asked, “So were you in love with this kid?” 

“No,” David said. He didn’t know Spot enough to be in love with him. If he had a crush, his interest lay in the was Spot lived his life. So drastically different than David, but at the same time, they were both hiding. 

He pulled up Ethan Conlon’s profile. He started donating three years ago, starting at 200 a year, but now up to $600 in quarterly installments of $150. Thanks to Marissa, there were next to no notes, just an address in Brooklyn and a note saying that all of his donations should go to the extension program that worked with GSAs upstate. 

David cleared his throat. “On our end, your last donation was just over 14 weeks ago. How did you send your recent one in?” 

“I put a wad of cash in an envelope and dropped it in the mail.”

“Oh, that’s--”

“It was on a  _ credit card. _ Three weeks ago. And it’s on my statement. Did Marissa embezzle? Is that what this is about?”

Part of his consciousness had decided that this person was Spot, David realized. It was even picturing Spot sitting in that apartment that David only spent a few hours in, having the conversation on the pink plastic phone that was on the end table. But Ethan Conlon had $600 to throw around and, statistically speaking, Spot Conlon was most likely to be living in Greeley in poverty, or in prison. Or dead. 

He’d looked Spot up on Facebook when it opened up to non-college students a few years ago, but found nothing. Smalls found him a few months later, and they exchanged numbers, but he hadn’t heard from Spot either. Smalls was living in Queens now, and David saw him a couple of times a year, but Spot didn’t come up often. They’d both moved past Greeley. 

“Marissa hasn’t worked here since before you sent in your donation,” David said, “It probably got marked wrong. I can transfer you to our accountant, but they won’t be in until tomorrow.” 

“David Jacobs?” Ethan asked. 

“Yes,” David said, “I’m a development--” 

“Do you like your job, or do you harken for a career as a paper boy?”

A grin spread over his face. “Nah,” David said, “I would be a lousy paper boy.”

There was another long pause. “David?”

“Spot?”

Spot laughed loud and hard, like maybe he wasn’t actually laughing. But that was how he always laughed, whether he was referencing a rumor about himself, or genuinely amused how miserable David was at their job. “Well fuck, how are you?”

Whenever he did think of Spot’s life after David left Greeley, he pictured many realities spurred by his workshops and the statistics he memorized. He did not picture a life with $600 annual dollars of disposable income. David didn’t have $600 to donate.

“Has your name been Ethan this entire time?” David asked. It was the only thing he really, really needed to know before they hung up.

“Yeah,” Spot said, “I kind of decided it wouldn’t be helpful to my career trajectory to go by a name Jordan Baca gave me in the first grade.”

“What is your career trajectory?”

“Well,” Spot said, “you know. I’m not a career paper boy, or dishwasher, so I really failed to follow through on that.”

“Are there career paper boys?” 

“Wiesel? Fuck me if I know. But yeah. No. Yeah, I left Greeley.” 

“What happened to the allegory of the cave?” David asked, “Remember, you told me you would never go to Manhattan because it would make Greeley intolerable.” 

“Oh yeah,” Spot said, “I figured out that at the end, the prisoner who left the cave didn’t have to go back.” 

  
  
  


They decided to get dinner on Friday, three days later. They talk on the phone once beforehand, and David asked if Spot had talked to Smalls since high school. Spot said “No, she changed her phone number or something, or we never we home at the same time. You’ve seen her? Has she shaved her head like she wanted?” 

So David called Smalls before they got together. He was out of town for work, but David didn’t offer to reschedule to when he could meet up with them too. David wanted to see 29-year-old Spot Conlon all on his own. 

“Oh cool,” Smalls said, “Glad he’s not dead in a ditch.” 

Smalls told him that Spot left town four months after David did, after he let loose how pissed he was that David disappeared from Greeley and left nothing but a note on his front door. Spot apparently never mentioned David after one question, and had no idea that Smalls had transitioned. 

“I figured you might come up,” David trailed off. 

“Oh, right,” he said. 

“How do you want me to refer to you?” 

Smalls laughed. “I mean, blaugh. I don’t know.”

“I figured you might not? You told me you haven’t been back to Greeley since you started testosterone. Your Facebook photo is still of a four-leaf clover.” 

“Yeah, I’m just waiting until I pass better then  _ bam!  _ I can’t wait for all the A-man-duh? jokes. Just feel it out. If it seems like he doesn’t talk to anyone back home, tell him I guess. I don’t know when I’m going to see him, and I don’t want to be violently misgendered if you guys like, fall in love before our schedules line up.”

“Do I just tell him you’re transgender?” 

“I guess? I’m not the one who works at the pride center. Go back to work and get a pamphlet about coming out by proxy to your small-town friends.” 

There obviously wasn’t a pamphlet about that, even though David made a mental note to ask Outreach about it. There also wasn’t a pamphlet about explaining to your three-year live-in boyfriend why he wasn’t invited to Brooklyn to meet Spot. 

Asher was very calm at all times, and sometimes David found it infuriating. They’d met at a trivia night through mutual friends, and got paired together in a deeply obvious setup. Asher was careless before he was even drunk, and they lost because his sloppy handwriting got David’s correct answers marked wrong. Even though he’d been to the firehouse and seen him in action when a call came in, David pictured him as a slow walking EMT who looked at people bleeding out and asked, “Oh, is that bothering you?” 

Sarah referred to Asher as David’s human security blanket. As he got older, the greyed out inability to feel were replaced with spells of panic. The feeling that he wasn’t on earth got worse was replaced with an intense awareness of every cell in his body. And they also got neat diagnoses, CBT, and medication when David wanted to refill them. When his heart started working to explode out of his chest, Asher’s calm energy never wavered. He would press one hand over David’s chest and one on the left side of his face and breathe. 

He and Asher lived somewhat separate lives, with Asher’s work schedule. Sometimes they went over 36 hours without seeing each other, but that was helped with Asher’s complete enthusiasm for texting and emoticons. David decided though, that this merited an in-person conversation, so they didn’t talk about meeting up with Spot until the morning of. 

Asher had been awake for 16 hours when David was going off to work, so he squinted and rubbed his eyes before saying, “You’re meeting up with a friend from Greeley?” 

“Not a friend,” David said, “We only spent a total of fewer than 40 hours within seven feet of him the entire time I was there. I spend more time with my cubicle mate in a work week.” 

“Okay.”

“He was primarily a coworker.”

“Okay.” 

“It’s not very serious.” 

“Yeah, you never waited until we were face to face to tell me you and Marissa were getting dinner.” 

“I  _ never  _ got dinner with Marissa.” 

Asher hummed. “Listen, I helped you upload your speaking engagements onto YouTube. I remember the one about the church on Christmas Eve. Maybe you don’t have feelings for this kid, but he’s a big part of your story. What a self-respecting Jew could get out of some Catholic kid looking at some stain glass I’ll never know but--” 

“I don’t have feelings for him,” David said. 

“Yeah, Asher said, “Don’t worry. I’m not worried. It’s a big deal, I think, but it’s not that kind of big deal.” 

David knew it was a big deal. He was never sure why, he’d tried to tease it out while writing speeches over the years. Asher teased David for including Greeley in his public speaking events, because he’d only lived there for less than half a year. Asher had left an Orthodox community but good-naturedly agreed when David asserted that no one in his community started rumors that he was turning tricks at a truck stop, which was a popular story right before David left Greeley. 

He’d gotten the feedback that people didn’t really understand what the references were about because David waffled between referring to his (never named) “coworker” as his first exposure to 

  1. Life destroying homophobia
  2. Rural homophobia
  3. Concrete evidence of the stigma of HIV/AIDS
  4. Someone who wasn’t ashamed of their sexuality in a place that was aggressively trying to shame him
  5. A gay community (His apartment)
  6. A religious gay person 
  7. ???

He didn’t know why he expected anyone to find him compelling when he couldn’t make any of those pretty clear impacts stick. 

On the subway ride over, it occurred to him that Spot could have one of the four videos on YouTube where David stood in front of a small crowd and tried to make sense of his story, which included references to Spot. They had 42 views max, but one of those could be him. Then again, Spot probably would have made fun of him on that first phone call if he had. 

Spot suggested a Thai restaurant which was about as far from Greeley as you could get aside from Sushi. David was fifteen minutes late because he’d decided that Spot would probably be late. When he walked in and saw Spot sitting at a booth with a book, it occurred to him that Spot had actually always been at the distribution center before David arrived on time. 

His hair was cut short and neatly, and he was wearing a green jacket over a white t-shirt. Any trace of the out of date grunge look was gone. David had come from work and felt overdressed in his tie and the formal coat his boss gently encouraged him to wear when he went to donors in person. He looked old, older than 29 while Spot still looked several years younger than his age. 

Spot looked up and smiled. He didn’t stand, so David shook his jacket off and slid into the booth across from him. 

“I knew you’d be late,” Spot said, closing his book. “You were always late.” 

“I was always on time,” David said. 

“Like I said,” Spot said, “late.” David noted that Spot remembered how punctual he was to a job that lasted less than a month, twelve years ago. “I ordered crab rangoon. You don’t keep Kosher, do you? It’s probably not real crab anyway.”

“I don’t,” David said, “My boyfriend does though, so I’ll take any chance to break it.” 

That was subtle, David decided. As subtle as a reference to a boyfriend could be, less than a minute in.

Spot smirked. “Ah,” he said, “Last I saw you, you were maintaining you weren’t gay. That’s changed, huh?” 

“Well I work at the Pride Center,” David hedged, “I would think that would have tipped you off.” 

“Yeah,” Spot said, “Still. Good for you. That self-hatred could have really killed you. How long?”

“What?” 

“Your boyfriend. How long?” 

“Three years,” David said, “You got one?”

“Oh yeah,” Spot drawled. “I picked one up at the store within an hour of moving here. Then dropped him. Then picked up another one. Three months in on this one, and we don’t have each other yet.” 

The server came over with the rangoon and David watched Spot order curry with the highest level of spice. David ordered a noodle dish, and a beer. 

“Pride Center, huh?” Spot asked. “How did that happen?” 

“Uh,” David started, “I was a history teacher at a private school for less than a year, and I took a class there about working with LGBT youth. Got to know the people there, and that kind of turned into a job.”   
  


“Is the job just fielding phone calls from assholes like me?” 

“No,” David said, “It’s also calling assholes like you and trying to convince them to give us their money, and sometimes going to dinner with big wheelers and asking for their money, push pass their stock market sob stories..” 

Spot’s eyes widened dramatically and he held his hands up in mock surrender. “Is that what this is about? I’m giving as much as I can give without living on ramen. I’ll hit you with the saddest sob story you’ve ever heard.” 

“What’s your sob story?” 

Spot smiled. “Oh, you know it. Poor kid in a poor town became a social pariah because he almost died from meningitis. It’s so sad.” 

“That’s an old story. You don’t have anything new?” 

“Yeah, but they’re not as good.” 

“Good,” David said. “I’m glad it doesn’t get worse than that. When did you come out here?” The server came out with David’s beer, and he noticed that Spot was only drinking water. “Are you driving?” 

Spot snorted. “No I’m not driving, I live in Brooklyn. I haven’t driven a car in three and a half years.” 

“You’ve been here for three and a years?” David asked. 

“I came out here for school,” Spot said. “Sold my car, left most of my shit to the current Greeley Gays.”

“The Greeley Gays?” 

“Yeah, whoever is living in that apartment now.” 

David hadn’t been sure if he’d made up the story that Spot’s apartment was passed from person to person for years, and he was glad to hear it was true. “You know, Greeley’s high school has a GSA now. The extension program pays for guest speakers and workshops to come out. Your donations make a direct impact.” 

“Again, you’re not getting any more money from me.” 

“I’m not asking. This isn’t a donor dinner. I’m just saying. But seriously, how did you end up here?”

Spot grinned and reached into his wallet. In a flash, David recognized that it was the same wallet David saw Spot pull out once when another paper boy gave him a few dollars in exchange for something David couldn’t remember. In the present, he pulled a business card out and handed it to him. 

_ The Reverend Ethan Conlon  _

_ Associate Rector _

_ St. Sebastian’s Episcopal Church  _

The card looked real, it had a phone number and an email. David turned it over and found no message that indicated this was a joke. 

“You need a master's degree to be a priest in this denomination,” David said. 

“Yeah,” Spot said, “That’s what they told me when I graduated from seminary. Thank God, too. I would have looked like a real fool otherwise.” 

“You were a high school dropout, last I saw you.” 

“No,” Spot said, sounding amused. “I was a high school senior in a correspondence program. I graduated early, and went to college at seventeen. Why do you think I worked eighteen hours a day? That apartment cost less than spit. I was saving up to get out.” 

“But the allegory of the cave,” David said, “You said you’d never leave.” 

“No I didn’t,” Spot said, “I said I hadn’t left yet. My life wasn’t like yours. I didn’t have options unless I carved them out of the cave myself. I wasn’t about to fuck my brain up if I couldn’t leave.” 

David started to respond, but his impulses interrupted by asking, “Priests can say fuck?” 

“This one can, yeah.” 

“You were Catholic, the last time I saw you too,” David said. 

“Yeah,” Spot said, “Now I’m Catholic Lite. That was twelve years ago. I only brushed my teeth every other day, and thought they spoke Spanish in Brazil back then too.” 

David put the card in his wallet, planning on showing it to Smalls. “You only brushed your teeth every other day?” 

“Yeah, I was a fucking mess. You were a mess too, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t have seven cavities.” 

David shifted uncomfortably. “You thought I was a mess?” 

“I mean, I barely knew you,” Spot said, “But you basically never smiled, and you seemed intent on barely existing. When Smalls told me you didn’t come back after winter break, I kind of wondered if you killed yourself.” 

It never once, not back then and not even during the period in college when David wasn’t sure if he was breathing at a given moment, did David want to kill himself. Smalls made a similar comment when they first reconnected, and David was surprised that he even made enough of an impact for anyone to think about his mental health. Maybe that was reason enough for them to wonder. 

“Yeah,” David said, “That--it’s actually a mental health thing. But I think I also was just so scared for anyone to know who I was.” 

“I didn’t know who you were,” Spot said, and his voice and body language was the most serious he’d ever been in front of David. Maybe he learned that in seminary. “But I barely knew you. Do you let people who you are now?” 

“Yes, Asher does.” 

“Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah. And Sarah, and my parents, kind of. And I do, too.” 

“You know who you are?” 

“Yeah. Finally.” 

“That’s fucking deep man.” 

David laughed. “It’s so weird to imagine you being a priest. Do you wear one of those collars?” 

“Oh yeah,” Spot drawled, “I carry it on me at all times, in case of spiritual emergencies.” 

“Do you really?” 

“No. Is this a spiritual emergency? I can go back to my apartment and be back here with it, ten minutes tops.” 

In an impulsive and stupid attempt to  _ not _ , David committed an LGBT community sin and outted Smalls when it wasn’t warranted. “Smalls is transgender.” 

“Yeah, no shit,” Spot said. 

“She-- _ he _ told you?” 

“I knew him,” Spot said, “I didn’t know you, but I knew Smalls.” 

“He wore pink and--”

“I’m calling the Pride Center and getting you fired. I knew him. He wanted someone to know him. That’s all anyone wants.” 

David didn’t know where to go from here. He didn’t know what he was looking for, really. Maybe part of it was to see who Spot was, but maybe part of it was showing Spot who he had become. Thinking back on that night, it was less surprising that Spot had become a priest than it was that he had one more degree than David had. Maybe he was a little embarrassed by comparison because the story he’d made about himself was that he was the one who succeeded. Small town homophobia had chewed up this person he barely knew and spit them out. Maybe he was a little embarrassed that the most identifiable reason he made barely any money at the pride center turned out to be wrong. 

“Are you okay?” Spot asked. 

“Yeah,” David said. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this.” 

“What are you like?” 

“I just.” David struggled to find the words. “I think I was kind of in love with you, back then. But I didn’t know it. Like, my brain wouldn’t even let me form the words to know it.” 

Spot nodded. “I was kind of in love with you too. But not really you. I was in love with someone being able to exist inside themselves without any of the shit at Greeley really reaching him. I don’t think I would have finished up school and left so quickly if you hadn’t left. I knew you were going to leave, the minute you said your sister asked you to come back with her. You don’t stay if you can leave. I knew that, but I was kind of playing at leaving until you left. The idea was just something to do.” 

“It reached me,” David said, “Even if all it did was push me back further, the shit in Greeley reached me.” 

“Yeah,” Spot said. “I didn’t know you. It was just a story about you that I’d made up. But it got me here, even if it wasn’t true.” 

David wished he knew what the story Spot had made up had gotten him. “I’m glad you’re alive.” 

“Thank you.” 

“And that you’re a priest.” 

Spot laughed. “Thanks.” 

“I’d like to know who you really are now,” David said. “You don’t still have three jobs, do you?” 

“No, just the one. And I want to see Smalls too, we should all get together.” 

“Yeah, we can get around to actually forming that club,” David said. 

“What, former paper boys?” 

“Naturally occurring freaks,” David corrected. 

When the food came, Spot asked for chili paste to make his curry spicier, and fielded a phone call from the senior priest. Asher texted a single question mark and David responded that it was going well, and he’d be home in a few hours. 

David paid with the excuse that it would free up $18 for Spot to donate to the extension program. They said goodbye twice, once at the door and a second time, after they realized they were going the same direction, when David split off at the subway entrance. 

“Hey, David,” Spot asked. David turned around. “Still got that bike? Don’t tell me you fucked up a week of my life for a bike you used for two months.” 

David smiled wide. “Still got it,” he said, “I ride it almost every day.” 

“Good,” Spot said, “I knew there was a reason.” 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
